Juggling 3 is a skill that is way easier than people think until they do it. But the very next question is will be, "how many can you juggle?" as they apparently think juggling 4 is just 33% more difficult than 3.

▲ vunderba 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s also fun that you can tweak it without the layperson even noticing the change in relative difficulty.

  Cascade pattern = easy difficulty  
  Shower pattern = normal difficulty  
  Box pattern = hard difficulty

As someone who loves to run their hands up and down in the piano in grand sweeping arpeggios, I'm a huge fan of patterns where the perceived difficulty is higher than the actual difficulty.

▲ Someone 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For those wondering: to juggle 4 balls, you either have to decrease the time between catching a ball and throwing it again or increase the time a ball is in the air.

Unless you start throwing feathers or balloons, the latter requires you throw higher. That requires you to either spend more time launching them up (bad for the ‘decrease time between catching and throwing’) or use more force (bad for throwing accuracy.

Also, even assuming you juggle 4 balls keeping “time in hand” equal, you have to throw it higher by a factor of (4/3)². That’s almost 2.

And even if you manage to make those throws with the same accuracy in angles, the errors in location by the time you catch the balls scale by the same factor.

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crystal_revenge 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> you either have to decrease the time between catching a ball and throwing it again or increase the time a ball is in the air

I think you might be thinking of 5 ball juggling.

4 ball juggling (or at least it's most common variant, "The Fountain" [0]) is fascinating because it's really juggling two balls in each hand in a way that makes it appear similar to the standard cascade. Though this may sound "less hard" than what people initially imagine, it's a very different feeling than all the basics you learn using only 3 balls.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(juggling)

	▲	rantallion 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They're not wrong. Assuming alternating hands are doing the throwing (rather than both hands throwing a ball simultaneously), 4-ball patterns mean each ball is in the air for 4 beats, while 3-ball patterns only take 3 beats each. And once one realises that many juggling patterns can be understood by the number of beats each ball takes to return to a hand, one can then think in siteswap (https://juggle.fandom.com/wiki/Siteswap).

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dsclough 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In my experience people can’t even tell how many balls you’re juggling after 3. 4, 5, 6, 7 all get “how many balls is that”, silly stuff like 3 ball factory blows more minds than 5 ball site swaps

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munificent 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Also, with a three ball pattern, most of the time there's only a single ball in the air. With four, there are almost always two. The odds of a mid-air collision increase significantly, and go up as the number of balls increases.

That also forces you to have much more consistent throws which, as you note, gets harder because you also have to throw higher which scales up any error in the force you're applying.

▲ thom 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Much easier to learn to juggle three clubs, and then swap them for knives. Really no harder than 3 balls but significantly more flashy.

	▲	rantallion 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Don't forget about fire. Even the most boring of moves amaze crowds when half your equipment is burning.